Flashback Friday: Possibilities of space exploration in 1980 – KELOLAND.com

Earlier this week, NASA launched another mission to mars. A week after the Apollo 11 moon landing celebrated its 51st anniversary.

In this weeks Flashback Friday, we take you back to 1980, where an Astronaut from Apollo 17, turned U.S senator spoke on the technological possibilities of space exploration.

New Mexico senator Harrison Schmitt is not unfamiliar with scientific exploration on a grandiose scale. It was Schmitt, the geologist and astronaut who explored the lunar surface in Americas latest Apollo 17 moonshot. As a senator, Schmitt is still preaching space technology, now pushing the formation of a Earth resource information satellite corporation. Which would collect and distribute satellite information on a worldwide scale. Information Schmitt says could help U.S. ag prices by using satellite pictures to predict world crop production. Information also to curb the energy crunch through satellite energy exploration. Its acceptance, Schmitt says, is Americans technology test, which will spell prosperity or the lack of it for the future.

Our problem is most of the leadership in the major agencies of government, like the department of the interior, literally dont want us to develop energy in this country, and domestic energy. Theyre afraid of what it does to the environment, theyre afraid of what it does to the atmosphere, and so forth. And so the regulatory and taxation restrictions on doing anything are so formidable. Plus the bureaucratic inertia that comes in budget cycles, that it is almost impossible to get these kinds of things off the ground right now.

Schmitt worries that America will miss out on economic advantages if other countries develop the system first. So do many of these scientists. But according to Schmitt, not the government, which harbors a coolness to towards the system which Schmitt describes as enough to frost a chili pepper.

Bill Overman, KELOLAND News.

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Flashback Friday: Possibilities of space exploration in 1980 - KELOLAND.com

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